National Post editorial board: Military impotence

From the archives: Dec 29 2001A little more than a month ago, Ottawa made a great show of committing ground troops to the war in Afghanistan. The government placed Edmonton’s crack infantry unit, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, on 48-hours notice to ship out. Then the Cabinet shivered. The “hot” war persisted a few days longer than anticipated and Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, confessed: “We don’t want to have a big fight over there. We want to bring peace and happiness.” The Patricia’s readiness was downgraded to seven-days notice. Canada would not send troops into battle, the Cabinet explained, just happiness-enforcement.

Now even this limited commitment is in doubt. Britain, under United Nations authorization, is assembling an international force of 3,000 to 5,000 peacekeepers. Before Christmas, a spokesman for Art Eggleton, the Defence Minister, admitted, “it could be we’re not asked to provide anything.” But such requests, or lack thereof, do not arise out of a vacuum. If Canada is not asked to provide anything in Afghanistan, it is likely because Ottawa has warned the UN or the British not to ask.

This is part of a pattern. When Canadian troops face a significant risk of being killed or (worse, apparently) of having to kill others, the Cabinet balks. The UN has designated Afghanistan a Chapter-7 mission, meaning international troops will have greater latitude to engage in battle than during a more common deployment of the Chapter-6 variety. There can be little doubt that Ottawa’s reluctance to join is heightened by the increased potential for war-making, and not just peacekeeping, to be done.

Still, there is another reason Mr. Chretien and Mr. Eggleton are getting cold feet: Canada is probably incapable of participating effectively. Since the Liberals resumed power in 1993, the military budget has suffered a funding cut of nearly 30%, after adjusting for inflation and loss of purchasing power. Despite the fanfare surrounding the increased defence spending in the recent budget, the Liberals have committed just $300-million over the next five years to buying new defence equipment — compared with the $4-billion the Auditor-General estimates is required just to maintain operational readiness, and even less compared to the $8.5-billion the Royal Canadian Military Institute says is needed to replace aging weapons and vehicles.

Thus, though the UN has suggested Canada might replace Britain in three months as the lead nation in the Afghanistan peacekeeping mission, we likely lack the personnel and equipment to accept the honour. Although the Forces’ official nominal troop strength is 60,000, they lack the budget and material to sustain more than 4,000 or 5,000 in the field, so sending any more than a couple of hundred to Afghanistan could break the camel’s back.

Even if we do deploy some troops to Afghanistan, they will likely have to go without their infantry support vehicles — as the Forces lack the airplanes and ships necessary to transport them. We would also have to rely on other nations’ militaries to provide our troops with food, water and munitions. We could send planes, but might have to beg other air forces for spare parts, as we did in Kosovo in 1999. To add insult to neglect, Mr. Chretien, in an interview aired Christmas Day on Global TV, pronounced our military “well equipped” and dismissed those who press him to end his fiscal abuse of the Forces as working hand in hand with defence contractors.

Canada prides itself on participating in more UN peacekeeping missions than any others but it now stands on the cusp of being unable to wage war or keep peace. Having abandoned both hard power and soft power, the federal Liberals are carving out a new niche: no power. And they object when anyone dares point out their conundrum.